Actor Alec Baldwin (“30 Rock”) will narrate the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s July 5 performance of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” at Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Music Shed.
The Abraham Lincoln-themed afternoon program, conducted by Karen Kamensek, also includes the world premiere of Philip Glass’s new, newsy Symphony No. 15, “Lincoln,” which the composer withdrew from its originally scheduled world premiere at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center.
“Lincoln Portrait,” which premiered in 1942, is a one-movement piece for orchestra and a speaker, who reads several biographical vignettes and excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches at various points in the score. Several prominent politicians, entertainers, social activists, and scholars have narrated the piece; the BSO’s own list of past “Lincoln Portrait” narrators includes singer and civil rights advocate Marian Anderson, actors James Earl Jones and Avery Brooks, former Massachusetts governors Deval Patrick and Michael Dukakis, and historian Heather Cox Richardson.
Baldwin’s only other appearance at Tanglewood was in 2010, when he narrated Peter Boyer’s piece “The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers” with the Boston Pops and Keith Lockhart.
The BSO’s Lincoln-themed program is the final event in Tanglewood’s Independence Day celebration at the Shed, which begins July 2 with a Boston Pops concert of music by Bernstein and Sondheim, and continues with two evenings of shows by James Taylor and his All-Star Band.
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.